1-2-3 Come Make A Pumpkin Craft With Me!
Hi Ho! it’s pumpkin time don’t ya know! At least that’s what my Y5’s always told me when I asked them what month it was. Children come up with the cutest things! One of my all-time favorite activities with my little "punkins" was "Peekin' In A Pumpkin". We'd do this "craftivity" on the day that we carved our class pumpkin.
So that I could orchestrate the lesson, I always sent a newsletter home asking for an adult volunteer to come in and do the honors. My kiddo's would vote what kind of face they wanted, and could choose from a variety of shapes for the eyes and nose, as well as an emotion: happy, sad, scary. I probably don't need to tell you that the "scary" pumpkin won 90% of the time.
I'd give everyone a chance to feel the pumpkin "goop." Surprisingly, some of my kiddo's never had this experience. I'd write their "describing" words on the board, and encouraged them not to repeat an answer that someone had already given. A few wipes would expedite cleaning sticky fingers. 
We'd don paint shirts and enjoy painting our paper plate pumpkins orange. While they happily made their "mess-terpieces" my helper would wash the seeds, set some out to dry, so that each child got a scoopful to glue to the "inside" of their pumpkin.
The rest were salted, drizzled with butter and then popped into the cafeteria oven, for later taste testing. Every year about 50% of my Y5's liked pumpkin seeds and the other half didn't. Then we'd graph the results. (Included in packet.)
Here's How To Make A Peekin' In A Pumpkin:
- I took 2 days to do this project. On the 1st day, have children paint their two paper plates orange.
- Before hand, cut a circle out of the center of one of the paper plates.
The seeds were washed and dried over night. On the 2nd day, give a scoopful of pumpkin seeds to each child. If you can't carve pumpkins in your school, buy a package of them at the grocery store.- Have them swirl some paint, mixed with Elmer’s glue, on the non-cut plate with a piece of yarn.
- Kiddo's arrange the yarn and pumpkin seeds on the plate to look like “pumpkin guts”.
- When the plates are dry, staple them together. Staple the cut out “window” plate on top of the “pumpkin gut” plate so that it is inverted and 3-dimensional.
- Insert a green rectangular strip of construction paper, punch a hole in it and tie a piece of yarn from it.
If you’d like to include a little rhyme time, run off the poem-stem on green construction paper. You also need to make sure students have a square on their pumpkin, so I made one with “Peekin’ in a Pumpkin” written on it. Have students glue this to the back of their poem stem. Children write their name above or below.
- Students can make a Jack-O-Lantern face on the back of their pumpkin with a black marker. So that I could review shapes again, I pre-cut a variety of shapes of black construction paper, for children to choose, arrange and then glue to make the face. If you're school is not into Halloween, and do a Harvest theme instead, simply leave the back of the pumpkins plain.
- You don’t need a leaf, but if you have time, students can trace their hand (with their fingers spread) on green construction paper, cut out and glue next to their stem.
- Another bit of pizzazz can be added, by punching a hole at the top of the plate, wrap a green pipe cleaner around a pencil and poke it through. This is a quick way to reinforce the fact that pumpkins grow on vines and is wonderful fine-motor practice.
- Suspend your pumpkins from the ceiling and watch them twirl in the breeze.
Click on the link to view/download the Peekin' In A Pumpkin craftivity.
Thanks for visiting today. Feel free to PIN away. If you'd like to take a "peek" at the awesome educational things I spend way too much time pinning, click on the heart to the right of the blog. I blog daily, so I hope you can pop back tomorrow to see the newest FREEBIES.
"The teacher who is indeed wise, does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather, leads you to the threshold of your mind." -Kahlil Gibran
